The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to a method and system for identifying unorganized items, more particularly, but not exclusively, to identifying unorganized items with Computerized Tomography (CT).
The term “unorganized items” as used herein refers to a number of different items placed or piled in an unorganized way such that part of the items can be covered or hidden one by the other. The different items may have different sizes, shapes and/or be made of different materials. The items may also cause passive or active electromagnetic interference for example they may comprise metal or aluminum that block electromagnetic or RF signals.
In the art, the identification of such unorganized items required treating each item independently, for example by scanning a barcode or UPC (Universal Product Code) on the item's package. This usually also requires organization of the items in order to expose the barcode on the package.
Another method known in the art is the use of RFID tags on the items. While an RFID reader has the ability of scanning a plurality of items at once, the scanner may be blocked by presence of metal or any other electromagnetically active or passive interferer in the items. In addition, RFID tags are relatively expensive and therefore not adapted for wide scale use, especially for low value items.
CT is used in various fields. An object is irradiated (by X-rays, gamma rays or other radiation) and attenuation data is acquired from different directions. A set of 2-D images or a 3-D image of the object is reconstructed showing the internal structure of the object such as density distribution, dimensions and shape.
CT is common in medical applications where the scanned objects are human patients, and in security applications for scans of luggage. CT is sometimes also used in other fields such as industrial or academic use, for example for evaluating properties of materials or for studying biological and paleontological specimens.